"What's your preferred pronoun?"

[umbel]

I'm really annoyed! I packed my son off on an activity holiday this morning. He's very into 'girl' stuff [forgive the convenient shorthand - you know what I mean] and has sometimes says he wishes he was a girl, but we've fought hard to keep him away from trans ideology, encourage him to pursue what interests him, wear what he likes, love himself as he is and take no shit from people who give him stick for it. He's just called and during our conversation he tells me a staff member asked him what his preferred pronoun was. He's 10!!

He had no idea what the staff member meant, and when this person rephrased to, "Do you prefer us to use he or she?" he said, "Why didn't you just ask me if I'm a boy or a girl? Surely that would have been easier?"

I'm proud at his sensible reply, but this stuff is just coming onto his radar and the last thing he needs is people putting this daft shit into his head!

Agog at poster who says way to deal with this is to force boys and girls to dress and behave in line with stereotypes.

This is where this stuff ends up and it's shit.

30 years ago it was different. This is regression, first men and women clothes etc went v gendered, now people who step outside are being policed, in a new 'woke' way. It's shit.

I'm in my 50s. As pp has said, some girls had short hair, others didn't. You wore whatever, particularly in primary school. All this glitter and pink was unheard of. Yes, there were "girls' clothes " and "boys' clothes " but we all wore T-shirts and jeans, shorts and jumpers etc.

Nobody has yet 'prounouned' any of my male friends. Lots of them have had long hair since they were very young and look like this:

You have cool friends Weezol!

Why didn't they just ask him his name and use that? No need to get into identity at all.

Micaela64 To the contrary, kids whose parents enforce pink sparkles are for girls and construction toys are for boys are the most likely to feel that they are the wrong sex, because they can't see another way of ppursuing their interests. The ex-husband of Susie Green (of Mermaids infamy) threw his male-born child's dolls into the bin because dolls are for girls and gays. Result: said child transitioned very early.

Let kids be kids. And for the love of god either stop complimenting girls' clothes or start complimenting boys. I was at the chemist this morning and saw a woman tell her friend's little daughter "isn't your dress pretty?" without even saying a word to her friend's son. If no one ever tells boys that they are looking sharp, they may well become jealous of their sisters. We already know from Paris Lees' account of enjoying male attention that some of the motive to transistion may be.envy of how women are complimented by men and each other.

preferred pronouns are like "guess"

How fucking homophobic. I'd be seething.

DD1 is 11 and gets comments about her being a boy all the time. She has a bob and likes to wear her football shorts for sport. She once had to have her little sister stand up for her and say 'she is my sister and she is a girl' at a sporting activity. Thankfully the (XX) woman was mortified and apologised profusely.

We have had conversations about trans issues already (because obviously they get it at school) and she is well aware that your sex is determined by biology but that has no impact on your personality. We've spoken a lot about the difference between being gay (completely normal and healthy now but faced prison years ago due to homophobia) vs trans (lifetime of drugs and surgery).

I'd be livid - DD2 would be ripe for this kind of thing as she likes a lot of things and clothing that go into the "stereotypically boy" box - we've done a lot of work with her to affirm it's OK to like what you want to like (and dinosaurs are cool as fuck so who wouldn't want a t-shirt with dinosaurs on) and then society tries to fuck it up.

We've also spent a bloody fortune on speech therapy sessions and one big target was sorting out her confusion about the use of he/she - kid was just ahead of her time!